The Urantia Revelation: The Structure and Meaning of the Universe Explained, Third Edition by Malcolm Locke

Author:Malcolm Locke [Locke, Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Amazon Publications
Published: 2016-10-21T04:00:00+00:00

22

The Evolution of Religion II: Magic, Priests, Sacrifice

In modern civilized society, problems in the world are attacked through science, through knowledge of facts achieved through experimental means. In earlier times, the real problems of an imaginary ghost environment led to magic, a means to control the spirits through persuasion or force and so control one’s own destiny. Fetishes and other spirits were the magician’s agents.

MAGIC

Magic and science have the same goals, to learn the future and to influence the environment, but the transition from magic to science has been long, bitter, and drenched in blood. Only now have Urantians backed into the truth through long experience and have turned around to face the world with the technology of science. Primitive humans were driven by the same curiosity and fear, to know about the world and to control it.

The inability to understand the concept of natural death encouraged the belief in magic, the deliberate manipulation of ghost power to kill. Commonly ten people would be killed in retribution for the death of one man who died naturally, a custom that greatly held back the growth of population. Before death, the victim usually confessed. The later notion of original sin, that humans were born to die, was therefore a great advance over recurring mass murder.

When everyone believes in magic, the fear of death through magic can actually cause death, which of course reinforces the theory. If the magic does not work, then there is need for more magic. Anything having to do with the body can be manipulated to harmful effect. For this reason early humans buried their excreta in secret and covered their spittle and left no food in the bowl. None of this behavior had anything to do with the practice of hygiene, which did not exist.

Magic was public when performed by the shaman or priest, and private—to harm one’s enemies or seduce one’s beloved—when performed by the sorcerer or wizard. Wands and incantations were common, and the magician was often naked. There were many women magicians. Magical incantations, often danced or acted out, evolved into public prayers. Mimicry had magical power. Sexual license at May Day is imitative magic that appeals to the sex lives of plants. Dolls bring fertility.

Because there are two kinds of spirits, good and bad, there must be white and black magicians. It is dangerous to do too well in life—you could be practicing the black arts and therefore must be killed, as continues in Africa today. Half the world still languishes in the grip of ghost-fear, fetishism, and the belief in magic. And even those living in the civilized world are spellbound by the one they love, ill-starred when they lose at the track, covetous of possessions, longing for inspiration, fearful their children might be spirited away, hopeful for ingenuity (when the spirit “is born within”), entranced by beauty, thunderstruck by levels of ignorance (because a spirit lives in thunder), and astonished (“thundered,” when a spirit enters) at the whole thing.

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